The Boogeyman

By Stephen King

I came to you because I want to tell my story, I can't go to a priest because

I’m not Catholic. I can't go to a lawyer because I haven't done anything to consult a lawyer

about. All I did was kill my kids. One at a time. Killed them all. Denny in 1967. Shirl in 1971.

And Andy this year. I want to tell you about it.

INTRODUCTION
The man: Lester Billings from Waterbury, Connecticut. According to the history taken from
Nurse Vickers, he is twenty-eight, employed by an industrial firm in New York, divorced, and the
father of three children. All deceased. This is Lester’s story (AKA The Boogeyman by Stephen
King).

I married Rita in 1965-I was twenty-one and she was eighteen. She was pregnant.

That was Denny. I had to leave college and get a job, but I didn't mind. I loved both of

them. We were very happy.

Rita got pregnant just a little while after Denny was born, and Shirl came along in

December of 1966. Andy came in the summer of 1969. Denny was already dead by then.

Andy was an accident. That's what Rita said. She said sometimes that birth-control stuff

doesn't work. I think that it was more than an accident. Children tie a man down, you know.

Women like that, especially when the man is brighter than they. It doesn't matter, though.

I loved him anyway

The boogeyman killed them all. Just came out of the closet and killed them. You

think I’m crazy. It's written all over you. But I don't care. All I want to do is tell you and

then get lost.

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 It started when Denny was almost two and Shirl was just an infant. He started

crying when Rita put him to bed. We had a two-bedroom place, see. Shirl slept in a crib in

our room. At first I thought he was crying because he didn't have a bottle to take to bed

anymore. Rita said don't make an issue of it, let it go, let him have it and he'll drop it on

his own. But that's the way kids start off bad. You get permissive with them, spoil them.

Then they break your heart. Get some girl knocked up, you know, or start shooting dope.

Or they get to be sissies. Can you imagine waking up some morning and finding your kid-

your son-is a sissy?

After a while, though, when he didn't stop, I started putting him to bed myself.

And if he didn't stop crying I’d give him a whack. Then Rita said he was saying 'light' over

and over again. Well I don't know. Kids that little, how can you tell what they’re saying.

Only a mother can tell.

Rita wanted to put in a nightlight. One of those wall-plug things with Mickey Mouse

or Huckleberry Hound or something on it. I wouldn't let her. If a kid doesn't get over

being afraid of the dark when he's little, he never gets over it.

Anyway, he died the summer after Shirl was born. I put him to bed that night and he

started to cry right off. I heard what he said that time. He pointed right at the closet

when he said it. 'Boogeyman," the kid says. 'Boogeyman, Daddy.'

I turned off the light and went into our room and asked Rita why she wanted to

teach the kid a word like that. I was tempted to slap her around a little, but I didn't. She

said she never taught him to say that.

That was a bad summer for me, see. The only job I could get was loading Pepsi-Cola

trucks in a warehouse, and I was tired all the time. Shirl would wake up and cry every night

and Rita would pick her up and sniffle. I tell you, sometimes I felt like throwing them both

out a window. Christ, kids drive you crazy sometimes. You could kill them.

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 Well, the kid woke me at three in the morning, right on schedule. I went to the

bathroom, only a quarter awake, you know, and Rita asked me if I’d check on Denny. I told

her to do it herself and went back to bed. I was almost asleep when she started to scream.

I got up and went in. The kid was dead on his back. Just as white as flour except

for where the blood had . . . had sunk. Back of the legs, the head. His eyes were open. That

was the worst, you know. Wide open and glassy, like the eyes you see on a moosehead some

guy put over his mantel. Like pictures you see of those gook kids over in Nam. But an

American kid shouldn't look like that. Dead on his back. Wearing diapers and rubber pants

because he'd been wetting himself again the last couple of weeks. Awful, I loved that kid.

Rita was screaming her head off. She tried to pick Denny up and rock him, but I

wouldn't let her. The cops don't like you to touch any of the evidence. I know that-

The closet door was open. Not much. Just a crack. But I knew I left it shut, see.

We moved Shirl into Denny's old room a month after the funeral. Rita fought it

tooth and nail, but I had the last word.

It hurt me, of course it did. Jesus, I loved having the kid in with us. But you can't

get overprotective. You make a kid a cripple that way. Life goes on. Shirl went right into

Denny's crib. We sent the old mattress to the dump, though. I didn't want my girl to get

any germs.

So a year goes by. And one night when I'm putting Shirl into her crib she starts to yowl

and scream and cry. 'Boogeyman, Daddy, boogeyman, boogeyman!” That threw a jump into

me. It was just like Denny. And I started to remember about that closet door, open just a

crack when we found him.

The boogeyman got her, too. A month later. But something happened before that. I

heard a noise in there one night. And then she screamed. I opened the door real quick-the

hall light was on-and . . . she was sitting up in the crib crying and . . . something moved. Back

in the shadows, by the closet.

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 When she died I found her, see. And she was black. All black. She swallowed her

own tongue and she was staring at me. Her eyes, they looked like those eyes you see on

stuffed animals, all shiny and awful, like five marbles, and they were saying it got me,

Daddy, you let it get me, you killed me, you helped it kill me . . .

Rita still loved me. Oh, she was sort of colorless the first four or five months after

- dragged around the house, didn't sing, didn't watch the TV, didn't laugh. I knew she'd

get over it. When they're that little, you don't get so attached to them. After a while you

have to go to the bureau drawer and loot at a picture to even remember exactly what they

looked like.

So what's next? She's knitting little things, singing in the shower, and eating

pickles like crazy. Sitting on my lap and saying things about how it must have been God's

will. The baby came at the end of the year after Shirl's death. That's right. A boy. She

named it Andrew Lester Billings. I didn't want anything to do with it, at least at first. My

motto was she screwed up, so let her take care of it. I know how that sounds but you have

to remember that I'd been through a lot.

But I warmed up to him, you know it? He was the only one of the litter that looked

like me, for one thing. Denny looked like his mother, and Shirl didn't look like anybody. But

Andy was the spitting image of me.

That next year was the best one for us. I’d give every finger on my right hand to

have it back again. But this last year wasn't so good. Something about the house changed. I

started keeping my boots in the hall because I didn't like to open the closet door anymore.

I kept thinking: Well, what if it's in there? All crouched down and ready to spring the

second I open the door?

Andy died in February. Rita wasn't there. She got a call from her father. Her

mother had been in a car crash the day after New Year's and wasn't expected to live. She

took a bus back that night. It was all right when Rita was there, but when she was gone, it

started to get bolder.

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 You'd wake up at three in the morning and loot into the dark and at first you'd say,

'It's only the clock.' But underneath it you could hear something moving in a stealthy way.

But not too stealthy, because it wanted you to hear it. And you'd close your eyes, knowing

that hearing it was bad, but if you saw it.

And always you'd be afraid that the noises might stop for a little while and then

there would be a laugh right over your face and a breath of air like stale cabbage on your

face and then hands on your throat.

The kid was sleeping in the room with me. I didn't want to move him. I was afraid

to, after Denny and Shirl. But with Rita gone, I moved him. I knew it would go for him, see.

Because he was weaker. And it did. That very first night he screamed in the middle of the

night and finally, when I got up the courage to go in, he was standing up in bed and

screaming. 'The boogeyman, Daddy. . . boogeyman . . . wanna go wif Daddy, go wif Daddy.”

"But I couldn't,", "I couldn't. And an hour later there was a scream. An awful,

gurgling scream. And I knew how much I loved him because I ran in, I didn't even turn on

the light, I ran, ran, ran, oh, Jesus God Mary, it had him; it was shaking him, and I heard . .

. I heard it when Andy's neck broke."

When it was over, I called the police. He was lying on the floor and staring at me.

Accusing me. A tiny bit of blood had run out of one ear. Only a drop, really. And the closet

door was open-but just a crack."

I lied to the police, see? Told them the kid must have tried to get out of his crib in

the night and . . . they swallowed it. Course they did. That's just what it looked like.

Accidental. like the others. But Rita knew. Rita . . . finally . . . knew. . .

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SOURCE INFORMATION
Author: Stephen King
Book: Night Shift
ISBN: 978-0451170118
Publisher: Signet Books
Date (Month/Year): Dec 1994

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